It's our first full day back in the homeland trenches today after being on the road for the last month and a half. It's good to be back, especially as there have been so many things we've wanted to be able to work on over the past several weeks which have been nearly impossible to accomplish from the road. We look forward to getting back to the hardcore investigative grind very soon!

Along with the month and a half on the road doing various speaking engagements, important meetings and accomplishing other super-secret missions (fruits of which will appear later), someone decided to drop an opportunity to do a weekly radio show on us during that same period. All of which make a difficult job (keeping up with BRAD BLOG and Velvet Revolution duties on the fly) all the much more difficult.

So it's been both a fruitful period, and an extremely difficult --- and frequently frustrating --- one all at the same time.

It'll likely take some time to get caught up and fully back to speed here. (Even the month and a half worth of accumulated snail mail is a carbon-based mountain that needs climbing! Including a number of snail-mail donations --- thanks! --- which have yet to be processed!)

There are a number of items that we haven't been able to post over the last several days (at least) which are worthy of your attention. Some have been pointed to by the eagle-eyed BRAD BLOG commenters already, but several deserve a higher profile as full-fledged blog items in and of themselves. Several others we had hoped to discuss on the radio show last Saturday but had to dump due to lost time caused by technical problems. So we'll be posting some of those "catch-up" items shortly even if they are not quite as timely as we like to be here.

As well, there are several tasks at Velvet Revolution that need our immediate attention to boot. Concerning the "Divestiture for Democracy" campaign and other notable projects which haven't been able to receive the attention they require due to lack of both time and resources. So watch for some new information over there as we work to get caught up over there as well.

Oh, and it looks like Microsoft has made some internal changes to IE that has caused for some odd formatting to the blog in some cases. We'll need time to figure out how they messed things up, and what, if anything, we can do about it! Just what we needed right about now!

Thanks for your continuing support and patience as we crank back up to full speed over the next week or two. Slowly, but surely, we'll get there. So much corruption, so much progress made fighting it, but so little time, "staff" and resources to get it all out here into the sunlight where it needs to be. Nonetheless, onward and upward...as best and as quickly as we can.

And thanks again, as well, to Winter Patriot for his diligence in keeping things rolling here when we were not able to! We're glad to hear that he is just fine and was simply unavailable to run Saturday's Night's BRAD SHOW Open Thread. Apparently he told us in advance, but that news seemingly was one of too many things which dropped through the cracks. The BRAD BLOG "staff" has been fully reprimanded for their failure do note that in advance, and a top-to-bottom review of such policies here will be conducted shortly by the FBI's former-director Robert Mueller, Jeff Gannon, Judith Miller and the entire NEWSWEEK Editorial Board to ensure such failures never occur again.

BRAD! Welcome Home! Thank you so much for dedicating your life to saving our country!

Please! if at all possible try to get a little rest, eat some good, wholesome food and get some Kelp or dulce from your natural food store to sprinkle on your food. You're running yourself ragged and need to recharge your batteries, ya hear?!

Wow Brad! Back to the online fray! Sorry we don't stop to visit more, however.....
Just a quick note about the Newsweek story and Bush regime efforts to get rid of it

We really need to join forces in urging Newsweek "Don't back down!" At long last, the world is starting to wake up in outrage over the Bush Administration
policies, and hey, guess what..... NEWSWEEK CARRIED THE STORY! It was a story that was every bit the equivalent of the shot heard around the world, apparently sparking riots across the globe!!

Specifically, I refer to the story about the abuse of the Quran at Guantanamo, and yep, maybe they had a detail or two off. But, we all know as Raw Story reports it -

"Several former detainees at the Guantanamo and Bagram airbase prisons have reported instances of their handlers sitting or standing on the Quran, throwing or kicking it in toilets, and urinating on it." See:
RAW Story
THE PRESS
"Newsweek report on Quran matches many earlier accounts. Contrary to White House assertions, the allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo published by Newsweek May 6 are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States, RAW STORY has learned."

One more time everybody, the drill goes as follows: The Bush Administration puts pressure on the Newsweek folks to cover up what the Bush Admin.
has allowed/condoned, not just at Guantanamo but all over the world. If they can't make Newsweek retract the story, then they're afraid the rest of the stories will come out. The rioting and world outrage is not because Newsweek told the story. It is because Bush and Rumsfield allowed/condoned for it to happen out there!! And the Bush administration is upset, not because it occurred, but because Newsweek exposed it!

Hey! Let's Welcome Newsweek back to something resembling real reporting!! This is a major step forward to see MSM folks stepping up and starting to do something like real investigative reporting, and of course the Bush henchmen will scream at them. That's what happens when you speak the truth! Let's all send a note to Newsweek -DON'T BACK DOWN! DON'T RETRACT THAT STORY! If they do they too will continue to be part of the coverup of the truth.

Send a note to Newsweek urging them to not back down, but to instead tell the whole story including the letter from Conyers and the 51 Congressmen demanding an investigation.

Hey, Welcome back Brad!! Sorry for the abrupt jump into the trenches - The battles rage on!
gh

Perhaps all of the perplexities in the spectrum of ideas, attitudes, and situations we deal with in the blogosphere these days - politics, philosophy, crime, and religion, need attention at a higher level.

As you know I have argued that a lot of the behavior of this neocon admin and the neocon congress is due to the classified and secret ideas they are dealing with behind the public's back.

I have pushed the idea of PEAK OIL as the background reality causing them to act as if they had gone mad all of a sudden. The strange war rhetoric, the strange voting manifestations, and the strange compliance of the MSM in all of it.

I ran across an article that is actually an interview with a journalist who became a writer of a different type. He has been focusing on PEAK OIL and all it tends to mean.

He says: "One thing that I'm predicting is that there will be a vigorous and futile defense of suburbia and all its entitlements, no matter what reality is telling us to do. And this will translate into a lot of political mischief. You can quote me: Americans will vote for cornpone Nazis before they will give up their entitlements to a McHouse and a McCar."

He suggests elsewhere in the article (link here), that the current war ideology and those madnesses that go along with it, are the result of the powers that be knowing what is coming.

He thinks the madness is a cosmic kneejerk reaction on a massive scale.

Users having trouble viewing with the Microsoft IE browser can (and should) solve the problem themselves. Microsoft does not follow critical web software programming standards, so viewing problems will always be an issue, along with IE being the cause of the majority of Windows security and spyware/malware problems.

Millions of Windows users have already made the switch to the W3C/XHTML Standards compliant Firefox browser. Firefox is a lighter, faster, very secure Open Source browser that solves virtually all of the problems Windows users experience while using the Internet. It's free and fully supported by the Open Source community so why not give it a try?

I did get PayPal's confirmation. I guess I trust them? I have used PayPal for other purchases, but always got an additional response from the payee to let me know they received the amount of the transaction.

I try to send out a thank you note when receiving PayPal donations (harder to do for the Snail Mail donations). But I haven't answered to the couple that came in late last week yet. Just one of the catchup items on my plate.

Gordon H - Thanks for posting that. It's one of the items on my plate I hope to deal with soon! Thanks for getting the word out here now!

Jen - Thanks for the kelp tip! Not eating enough or well enough these days for sure! So hopefully I'll start getting some rest and decent food (with or without kelp!) soon now that I'm home!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: NEWSWEEK STATEMENT ON QUR'AN STORY FROM EDITOR MARK WHITAKER: New York-"Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Qur'an abuse at Guantanamo Bay."

Despite the fact that the original Newsweek report IS 100% TRUE and backed by previous reports! How low will the lapdog media go?

Army investigating allegations of mishandling at Guantanamo Bay facility

By Jacquelyn S. Porth
Washington File Staff Writer

*snip* ... Washington ľ The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff says a report from Afghanistan suggests that rioting in Jalalabad on May 11 was not necessarily connected to press reports that the Quran might have been desecrated in the presence of Muslim prisoners held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Air Force General Richard Myers told reporters at the Pentagon May 12 that he has been told that the Jalalabad, Afghanistan, rioting was related more to the ongoing political reconciliation process in Afghanistan than anything else....

...However, Myers said an after-action report provided by U.S. Army Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, commander of the Combined Forces in Afghanistan, indicated that the political violence was not, in fact, connected to the magazine report. ***more***

Bushw@ker, we keep all our idiots in one place; that's called the Texas Legislature, locally as the Lege. They are amusing, keep Ronnie Earle real busy and haven't shot anybody in the last couple of weeks as far as I know.

Torqued: those previous reports need to be sent out like buckshot flying hot and fast. Making Newsweek PROVE their souce was the key for the WH; however, they want a black-out and that shouldn't happen. And Newsweek better be checking out their source, who that person is, who he has worked for, money sources cause this sorta smells like Rather's Last Stand.

Last, Bush ain't from Texas. However, we do have idiot migrations ever so often. There's a real balance going on; that's why we have so many writers and artist that originate from here and so much music. Living in a feudal system set up by big energy and the top 10 law firms, you have a lot to reflect on.

Thanks so much for your powerful contribution to freedom and, at the very least, preserving the rationality of those who visit this board regularly. We howl at the moon a lot, but we're just practicing...at this point lol.

Oh, BW25 - What a thing it would be if someone could lean all these photos up against the Vietnam Wall on The Mall! This is such a heartbreak. And imagine the photos of all the Iraqi victims of their own "liberatiion"!

YaYaCanada: George W. Bush and company are turning Iraqi children into rubble, in spite of Luke 17:1 and 2 where Jesus clearly states: "It is impossible but that offences will come; but woe unto him through whom they come. It were better that he were hanged about the neck, and be cast into the sea than that he should offend one of these little ones." CHRISTIANS! What the hell are you thinking, letting this happen? Every church bell from North to South, and East to West, should be loudly ringing until this evil is stopped.
All the meetings and public prayer in the world won't stop Bush. If you don't have a bell, please get one!

When newspapers and news programs start reporting the news, I will subscribe again to the newspaper. Brad has only the truth - this is where I learn the truth in the world today. Keep on your single hand reporting, I'll keep sending money. You all are great!!!!

By Toni Locy, USA TODAY
Current and former detainees have been alleging for more than a year that American soldiers in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have desecrated the Koran Ś but none of the allegations has been substantiated by military investigators. ***more***

So - anybody think the military investigators will do the right thing here?